The Intelligent Woman's Guide to a Reasonably Happy Marriage

Big surprise: This was written by a man in 1953.

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May 28, 2015

Relationships and their expectations have changed a lot in Good Housekeeping's 130 years of publishing. There have been plenty of useful tips, tricks, and tales of happily ever afters, as well as a fair share of, shall we say, unromantic sentiments. Here is a man's opinion on how a woman can share a relatively happy marriage with her husband from our January 1953 issue.

Never steal a man's white horse.

Your man may love you to fuss over his clothes in private, but he will squirm if you adjust his necktie in public. He may let you make all kinds of major decisions, but he doesn't like you to tell the cabdriver where you're going, instead of letting him do it. He is afraid of your possessiveness in public. Your man wants to show his friends that he stormed you and carried you off on his big white horse; he's mortally afraid they may think you picked him out and caught him while you were going by on your little bicycle. Keep your hands off his necktie in public. Never steal a man's white horse.

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Impress his boss.

Having your husband's boss to dinner creates special problems. He's the one man in the world you can't fool about your financial status, so it's better not to try. If you hire a servant for the evening, when you don't usually have one, you'll merely make your guest feel uneasy because he's put you to extra expense. On the other hand, to show him that you can perform miracles of housekeeping contentedly on very little creates problems of another kind. The picture you want to paint is of a family that is doing nicely but is on its way to better things. Remember that it's a man you're trying to please. Your husband will know what he drinks. Have it, but make sure the seal is broken and the cork pulled in advance; nothing looks worse than a bottle specially bought for an occasion. Service it, but don't talk about it.

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Keep the intimacy alive.

Achieving real intimacy with a man is more complicated than it looks. A man may like to have his wife scrub his back, but he won't want her to ask him how much he spends for lunch. There are some things he likes to keep to himself. As a matter of fact, both parties have to have some private areas or they won't achieve real intimacy. They'll overshoot the mark and have familiarity instead, which isn't the same thing. Some of the coldest marriages are between people who know absolutely everything about each other. Real intimacy is a kind of perpetual discovery, and there has to be something to discover. A man has a kind of built-in advantage, because he goes off to work everyday, meets people, has new experiences. A woman can make up for this, in certain ways. She can, if she has time, read the newspapers thoroughly. For some reason, having read a news item someone else hasn't carries excitement and moral superiority with it; I don't know why. A woman can also learn more about her strictly local politics and affairs than her husband can, by talking to neighbors and to people she meets in stores. Paradoxically, there has to be something your husband doesn't know about you if you're to be really intimate.

Help him through job interviews.

Getting her husband ready for an important interview, and living through it while it is taking place, miles away, makes up one of the hardest tasks in a woman's life. There is a tendency to try to help out by using "body English," keeping one's fingers crossed all afternoon, etc. But the usefulness of this is not proved. However, there are things you can do to help. They don't include keeping after your husband about his clothes and appearance too much; that may merely bother him for he has a tendency at such times to believe that the world is in conspiracy to irritate him anyway. But you can rehearse the questions that are likely to come up. Deliberately plan a party for a couple of days after the interview, win or lose; let him see that your family life has a continuity and will go on whatever happens. It will, after all.